


Counting Up

by biblionerd07



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, sad Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-15
Updated: 2014-09-15
Packaged: 2018-02-17 13:50:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2311871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biblionerd07/pseuds/biblionerd07
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve counts to the second until Bucky comes home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counting Up

Steve can see his breath rising in the air. He and Sam are back in D.C., just in time for December to bleed cruelly into January, all harsh winds and dropping temperatures. The cold doesn't technically hurt Steve much, but he still wears enough layers to make him sweat and wakes up gasping after memories of sinking down, down, down into ice.

He thinks of being a child, he and Bucky pretending their breath is smoke from fat cigars they've seen men smoke, and the ache in his chest makes him look to the north. He can't actually see New York from here, of course he can't, but his vision travels 200 miles and eighty years behind to see scraped knees tended by a child's hands, feels a rattle in his chest, hears that old familiar voice telling him _and you better keep breathing through the night, hear me?_

He spent 189 days, six hours, eighteen minutes, twenty-four seconds chasing Bucky across four countries and two continents, always two steps behind, always finding carnage and rubble and more clues about what happened to his best friend but never finding what he was looking for.

Sam doesn't even try to school his worried looks anymore. Natasha calls or emails him every day. Peggy's niece, Sharon, has left him four voicemails in two weeks. Even Stark called and casually mentioned that he heard Steve was back from “vacation” and could drop by anytime. Steve never responds to anyone, not even Natasha. He can't. There's a hole in his chest and an ache in his bones and he can't face anyone, can't make small talk about the weather and smile like he didn't leave his best friend lying in a ravine to be taken by the wolves, not when he can still see Bucky's blank face in his mind, hear his confused screams, read the words in the files they keep finding, a mountain of sickening detail of torture and brainwashing and so much pain.

Steve burrows his hands deeper into his pockets and wonders if Bucky is in New York. Maybe he went back. Maybe he never left. Steve thinks about going to New York—he could stay with Stark, he could get a place in Brooklyn, he could sleep on a park bench. He could look for Bucky there. He has his bike; he knows Sam would let him borrow his car if he asked. He could take a train. It won't take long to get there.

He considers it. Where would he start his search? Brooklyn, yes, obviously. There's still that bakery down by the docks where they used to press their noses to the glass until the owner chased them away, shouting about smudges on his window, because they could never scrounge up the nickels to buy anything. The docks would be another dot on his map—the docks where they spent hours listening to the gulls and any passing thought the other shared, the docks where they imagined pirate ships, where they made poles out of sticks and thread and believed they could catch enough dinner to feed everyone, the docks a bully once threw Steve off and left Bucky to choose between clocking the offender or fishing Steve out of the water.

He'd have to look on their old street, of course, even though nothing's the same. The tenement with thin walls and patchy heat had been torn down decades ago, replaced by a shopping center. But if Bucky remembered, he'd head there first, Steve knows, because Steve knows Bucky.

But Bucky's not Bucky anymore.

Steve slams the door when he goes back inside, forty-two seconds later. He wouldn't be able to find Bucky anyway.

 

He runs with Sam. He calls Sharon back and apologizes for not answering. He calls Natasha back and doesn't waste his breath on apologies. He visits the Tower and doesn't drift off to Brooklyn. Months pass and he soldiers on. He visits Peggy. He does not go on any dates. Natasha doesn't push anymore. He eats and he sleeps and he breathes and he never, ever thinks.

 

He leaves his window open all night July 4, the entire seven hours, eight minutes, forty-nine seconds he sleeps. It's his birthday; he blows out the candles on the giant bald-eagle shaped cake Stark ordered and tells himself _Bucky will come_. Bucky didn't miss any of Steve's conscious birthdays for twenty years.

Bucky doesn't come.

Steve tells himself birthday candle wishes are a child's ideal anyway.

 

He stops talking about Bucky, because every time he does he's met with pursed lips or pitying eyes. He lies awake at night and thinks about the curve of Bucky's lips or the dimple in his chin. He eats his breakfast cereal and thinks about how much Bucky hated shredded wheat. He wonders where Bucky is. He wonders if Bucky cried out for him after he was taken. He wonders if Bucky will ever forgive him.

 

Steve is sitting on a park bench, eyes out of focus, with no sketchpad in his lap because he knows what he'd draw and he can't anymore, just can't handle the muscle memory in his hand that sweeps out the lines of Bucky's face, the slope of his shoulders. He can't do it anymore. He can't draw anything else and he can't draw that so he can't draw anything at all.

He goes to the park every day so Sam stops worrying that he doesn't leave the house except for work. He watches the children running around and the harried parents and the dog-walkers and the joggers and people going about their lives and wonders if he's actually still trapped in the ice because he doesn't feel like he's going about his.

He's been sitting there for one hour, four minutes, fourteen seconds, an acceptable length of time to keep Sam from watching him too closely, so he stands up to leave. He sees Bucky leaning against a tree, watching him. He keeps walking. He has thought he's seen Bucky 314 times since he fell from the train and it's only actually been him two painful, gut-wrenching times; Steve is not going to go trouble the stranger who's lucky enough to look like his best friend.

But the man's hair is long and his shirt has full-length sleeves and Steve feels the tug in his stomach that he's felt when Bucky is close but not immediately beside him since he was nine. He stops walking, right where he is, and just watches. The man who is James Barnes but maybe not Bucky stares back at him, thirty feet and who knows how many emotions between them.

Bucky/Not-Bucky walks up to him. It has been 394 days, eighteen hours, twenty-seven minutes, forty seconds since the hellicarrier. Up close, Steve can see fine lines in skin that always used to be smooth.

“Are you coming home?” Steve asks, still not looking him directly in the eye.

“Do I have a home?”

“If you want one.”

Steve stares at his shoes and Bucky/Not-Bucky stares at Steve. From the corner of his eye, Steve sees his lips press together and move to the side and suddenly Steve can't stop staring because that trait is pure Bucky, gathering his words and planning his entry into the conversation.

“I haven't found everything,” he says.

“What are you looking for?” Steve asks.

“Memories. Myself.” He shrugs. “You.”

“I've only been in one place.” Steve's voice comes out more harshly than he'd meant it to but his mind automatically tells him it's okay because this is Bucky and he is not careful around Bucky.

“Looking for you in here.” He taps his temple.

“Did you find me in there?” Steve asks.

“Only thing I _could_ find, some days. Nothing in there but you.”

They stand quietly for another moment. “So are you coming home?” Steve repeats, because the one thing the serum couldn't give him was patience.

“I'm still looking for that,” he says.

“Then why are you here? Just a pit-stop before you pull another disappearing act?” Steve won't be able to take it. He already knows that. He can understand in his head why Bucky can't be around him, but he knows in his heart he's not strong enough for Bucky to come back and leave again.

Bucky—because it _is_ him, just a different, haggard, hurt version—shrugs and squints up at the sun, the same way he did when he was nine or when he was fourteen or when he was twenty-five. “Thought I'd look here,” he says softly. He looks quickly over at Steve before looking down at his feet and scuffs one shoe across the ground. “Thought maybe we could look together.”

It takes them 12 minutes, 44 seconds to walk back to Sam's apartment. Another two days, eight hours, nine minutes, twelve seconds before Steve really believes Bucky is going to stay. And then he lets himself stop counting.


End file.
